


WinterIron 75 - Fireplace

by tisfan



Series: Stocking Stuffers [15]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Family Fluff, M/M, Tony Stark Has A Heart, fireplace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 03:52:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13022676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Tony is not to be trusted with home improvements...





	WinterIron 75 - Fireplace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Flight_Of_Icarus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flight_Of_Icarus/gifts).



> A/n -- this story takes place in the Communal Kitchen AU [after Fertile Ground](https://archiveofourown.org/series/554317) but before Proposal of Doom. If you have not read this series, what you need to know is that the Winter Soldier was involved in some genetic experiments (after Hydra recovered the supersoldier serum from Howard Stark in the 1990’s) that resulted in three children for Bucky: a daughter Rikki (19yrs old) and two sons, Jaime (9) and Sasha (1) who fled Hydra and came to the Tower, where Tony and Bucky have been together for… about a year at this point. This is their first Christmas together as a family. (In End of Tomorrow, Rikki makes references back to this Christmas)

“What the hell is this?” On the plus side, Rikki dragged him out from under the fallen wall before she started complaining.

Tony put some actual work into not saying the first fifteen things that popped into his brain -- which is probably why something resembling the truth came out, with all its resultant sentimentality. Which he generally tried to avoid around his step-daughter, so the fact that she caught him on a particularly trying day was just a rotten-cherry on top of his shit sundae.

“It’s going to be a fireplace,” Tony said. He was covered in plaster and bits of sawdust. And his shoulder ached abominably.

Rikki stared at the destruction of one of the interior walls of the penthouse. “Can’t say I’m seein’ that,” she said. There were dozens of glass blocks stacked on one side of the living room. Half the furniture was coated in fine layer of dust and fake soot, and the other half Tony’d actually thought to cover with bed sheets before he tore down a non-support wall. “Is this the sort of thing you get up to when Father’s not around, because it if is, I can see why he doesn’t leave on missions without you very often.”

“I am not to be trusted with house construction projects,” Tony snarked. “I know. Can you help me, or are you just going to stand around and criticize?”

“Pretty sure I can do both,” Rikki said. “The question is, why would I want to do the first thing?” She’d already pulled out her phone and was taking pictures of the disaster.

“If you are telling Eleven about this, tell her she can get her ass over here and help,” Tony said.

“Ellie has class today,” Rikki said, confirming that theory. The rest of the theory went that Negasonic Teenage Warhead was going to be showing the destruction photos all over Xavier’s school for gifted smart-asses. Sigh. #starkdisasters was going to be trending again.

“Yeah, okay,” Tony said. “So, give me a hand, Teenage Wasteland?”

“Why are you even doing this?” Rikki asked. She kicked over one of the long chunks of plaster that Tony had torn down to make room. The plans were fairly complex, but really, it wouldn’t be that difficult, he just needed a little bit of elbow grease and some luck. Someone to help him balance the support beam. And, of course, for his boyfriend to be gone for a few more days. Bucky got cranky when Tony put himself in harm’s way.

Rikki wasn’t incorrect about Tony getting into trouble while her father was gone, since Bucky, Nat, Steve, and Sam were all out on mission, out of contact. A fishing mission for a particularly elusive branch of Hydra, where Winter Soldier was pretending to revert to form and was looking for a way home, and the less Tony thought about that the happier he was going to be, because if anything -- anything at all -- happened to Bucky, Tony would tear the world apart to get him back, and damn the consequences.

“Aside from needing a distraction while your father is gone,” Tony started, “I’m mostly doing it for Jaime.”

“You’re tearing up your living space for my brother?” Rikki looked even more disbelieving than that. “Why?”

Tony shrugged his shoulders. Which hurt, because when the wall fell, and what had brought Rikki up to invade the penthouse in the first place, it had fallen on Tony’s back, and while he hadn’t been badly hurt, it’d been scary, and he’d screamed. So sue him, Tony was a little concerned about being buried alive. In his own penthouse. Which would have been horrifically embarrassing and he didn’t want the press finding out about it, thanks very much.

And not that he would mention it to Rikki, but he had to say, he was impressed. Her first, gut-instinct reaction, had been to race upstairs, weapons at the ready, to make sure that her father’s boyfriend wasn’t dead.

Probably because she’d promised Bucky that she’d look after him while he was gone -- Bucky was on a campaign to make the two of them get along, and there were a lot of things that Rikki was, but willing to actually defy her father wasn’t one of them.

He wondered absently what Rikki would have made of the particle accelerator he’d made in the Malibu place before the Mandarin blew up his house. He could have used her help, at the time. She’d have made a great support structure, the way she was standing there like the world’s most immovable combat Barbie.

“He asked me how Santa Claus was going to get into the Tower, since we didn’t have a chimney. So, I thought I’d make one.”

Rikki coughed, startled. “Stark, he’s almost ten years old,” she blurted. “He was raised by _Hydra_. He’s trained in assassination, infiltration, and espionage. If he’s telling you he needs a stocking, he’s just testing you, to see if he gets more gifts. He’s taking advantage of you. He doesn’t believe in _Santa Claus_.”

“Frankly, I don’t give a fuck, Ebenezer,” Tony said. “I do not care if he’s deliberately lying for the sole purpose of getting more presents -- not, frankly, that I think that’s possible. You may have noticed my tendency to be extravagant. But if that boy has retained enough childlike innocence to so much as care about Christmas at all… then he’s getting a _fucking fireplace_ and a goddamn stocking.”  

By the time Tony finished his rant, he was panting hard, on the verge of tears. He’d been that kid. The one who desperately, desperately needed to even pretend to believe in something. And if Jaime could manage it, Tony would tear the world apart to give him something to believe in. “So, are you going to help me, or what?”

Rikki scowled and Tony pretended not to notice that her eyes were overbright with unshed tears.

“Tell me what you need me to do,” she said.

***

“Wow, Tony,” Bucky said, staring. “This is amazing.”

Tony had opened up the library to the living room, and the fireplace structure was a two-sided, glass and obsidian mantlepiece where the wall used to be. The whole thing was elevated to about waist high, with a nook underneath the fire to store pillows for lounging in front of the fire. Like everything Tony touched, it had that modern industrial combined with classic beauty feel to it and added a touch of elegance and warmth to the normally white and somewhat lifeless room.

The fire itself was relatively narrow, but long, taking up a good fifteen feet between the two rooms, giving a reddish glow and heat to both. Along the living room side were hung nine stockings, each name stitched out in black on the white cotton tops of the stockings. _Rikki, Jaime, Sasha, U, Butterfingers, Dum-E, JARVIS, Tony_ and _Bucky._

“Can’t believe you got Rikki t’ help you with this,” Bucky said.

“She only hates me out of habit, now,” Tony said, shrugging. “Give us a few decades and we might even get up to civil.”

Rikki had come upstairs with her brothers for a little Christmas eve celebration, bringing her girlfriend with her, but the two of them had left fairly early. Rikki’d been planning a midnight ice-skating and carriage ride in Central Park for Christmas eve with Ellie for weeks, and Bucky was happy to see that the romance between the girls was blossoming. It was good, he thought, to see Rikki happy.

Jaime had bounced around, excitable and vocal in his delight. They’d decorated the smallish tree that Tony put up in the living room with ornaments that had -- Tony said -- come from an antique store, but Bucky was almost positive that they’d come from Stark mansion. Probably tucked away in a storage box by Maria Stark, because some of them were obviously hand-crafted, and Bucky recognized Tony’s handwriting scrawled across the back of one, even if he’d been about seven at the time. That little flourish on the end of his S hadn’t changed in almost four decades.

“Merry Christmas, sweetheart,” Tony said, bouncing up on tiptoe to kiss Bucky’s cheek. Jaime had already ensconced himself in one of the round, plush reading chairs in the library, tucked in with a blanket, a cup of cocoa and a good book, determined that he could wait up for Santa Claus.

“What’s your plan for gettin’ him t’ go downstairs to bed?” Bucky wondered.

“Easy enough,” Tony said, clapping his hands together briskly. “He might be looking for something to believe in, but he’s not going to ruin Christmas for Sasha by being naughty.”

“Good plan,” Bucky said. He drew his boyfriend in closer and nuzzled his neck. “Because I got other plans f’r that fireplace and it don’t involve little peepin’ eyes.”

“Oh?”

“You think I don’t wanna lay you out in front of a fire an’ make love with you, nice an’ slow?” Bucky purred into Tony’s ear, taking a nip of the lobe where Tony was so sensitive. He couldn’t wait to peel Tony out of his clothes and admire the man’s perfect, olive skin in the tawny firelight.

Tony shivered, leaning his head back to give Bucky better access to his throat. “Good plan, I like this plan, and I am delighted to be a part of it.” There was reluctance in every line on his face as he pulled away from Bucky’s embrace to start prodding Jaime out of the penthouse and downstairs to his own bedroom.

Bucky gave both his sons a hug and a kiss, smiled tolerantly as Jaime set up a plate of cookies and glass of milk for Santa Claus, and then, finally…

“Alone at last.”

“Merry Christmas.”

 


End file.
